


Bring Back What Once Was Mine

by Zaxal



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 05:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18423741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaxal/pseuds/Zaxal
Summary: When the group hears about the clock tree, they all debate using it to go back and fix their current situation. But Quentin is the only one who knows exactly where everything went wrong.





	Bring Back What Once Was Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from Tangled’s ‘Healing Incantation’.

Quentin stood before the clock tree, sweat beading on his brow as his hands moved.

The air felt so thin around him, the lack of magic tangible even here in Fillory where it most belonged. He tried not to think about it, about how, when they had first arrived, Fillory had seemed like _more_. The colors had been brighter, the air clearer, the world had been suddenly everything Quentin thought he could never experience because of the thing inside him that turned everything dull and lifeless.

They had drained Fillory of magic, taking and taking greedily until the colors faded and it had become little more than a husk.

Were they really that different from Martin Chatwin, at the end of the day?

Pain spiked through his wrist, and Quentin pulled it down with a hiss, the harnessed power quickly dissipating.

“Fuck,” he gritted out through his teeth, slowly rotating the hurt hand until there was a slight _pop_.

Jane had once told him Time Magic was too tricky, but he was running out of time. The Monster had all four pieces of his sister’s body. When Josh and Fen sent word that a clock tree had been found, Quentin had instantly jumped at the chance to rewind. 

Alice had offered to do it. She was still sacrificing, still looking for atonement, willing to lock herself back in the Library if they could do things differently. 

Kady wanted to go back further, back to Blackspire to turn the keys and free the well before Quentin ran off to meet the Monster. She argued that with magic flowing free, people would be able to protect themselves; the current war between Hedges and the Library wouldn’t have to happen. 

Margo insisted her ice axes could free Eliot; all Quentin had to do was trust her. And he did. He really did, but all of this… it didn’t have to happen.

Quentin could pinpoint the moment, the one no one else knew about, when everything had gone wrong.

Julia had come to him after the tense conversation to ask what he was doing, when she found him packing a bag. She told him he was running again, and maybe so. Maybe he was.

“What makes you think _you_ know how to fix all of this?” Penny asked while alone with Quentin, the last one to question him save for those still in Fillory. They were alone in the room Quentin had been staying in most often.

“I- I know where it went wrong. And it was me.”

“Of course it was,” Penny agreed without heat, and Quentin had almost smiled. “How do you know you can do it? Time Magic’s complicated shit.”

“My Discipline.” He hiked his bag over his shoulder. “My Discipline is Mending.”

“Minor Mending,” Penny reminded him.

“Yeah, well— That’s the thing, about time, right? One small change, and there, there are ripples. The butterfly effect.”

For a moment, they’d stood there in tense silence before Penny said, “Well? Are you going to ask me?”

Quentin blinked, confused. “Ask you what?”

Penny chuckled. “To take you to Fillory. Dumbass.”

It was strange, being trusted by Penny of all people. The only thing he’d said was just before he Traveled away, leaving Quentin alone in the forest: “Try not to get me killed, Coldwater.”

Which… was a distinct possibility if the Monster thought Quentin was running from him.

So Quentin stood up again, facing the clock tree, and he brought his hands up again. Magic gathered around him, tension stringing through his body as the clock’s hands _stopped_ their moving.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay.”

He tilted his fingers to the left, and slowly, the clock went back one tick. The world around him shifted in what he could only assume was reverse, and Quentin took another steadying breath. Carefully, he moved the fingers controlling the hand counterclockwise, and with each shift in angle, everything began to rewind. Without taking his eyes off the clock, Quentin saw Penny, then the apartment, Margo, Brakebills South, Alice, Mayakovsky, Aengus — all of these in flashes as time shifted faster and faster in reverse, his life pitching backward at breakneck speed around him.

There were moments he wanted to slow. To cherish. Eliot in the bright sunshine, back in control of his body for a moment or two, proving he was alive, but Quentin didn’t dare. If his concentration broke, he’d be stranded in that time until the clock tree grew again. If it grew again.

He only had one shot at this, and it was tempting to go back as far as he could, to that early night as first years. Refuse to participate in Alice’s spell, though he didn’t know enough about the other timelines to say whether or not that would be enough to stop the Beast. Quentin didn’t know if he could live with himself, knowing that Fillory was suffering under that cruel reign, if he’d be able to leave well enough alone. Perhaps he could save Jane, and together they could work with more loops—

The farther back he went, the bigger his ripples would be.

Blackspire passed in a blip, and then there were the keys, the collection, all of it—

Quentin slammed his fingers back into a neutral position, not daring to look away from the clock tree from where it sat in the throne room at Whitespire. This could be moments before or moments after the confession. Carefully, he pulled back on the clock hands again, and slowly, so slowly the throne room shifted, and, a moment or two later, the view was being pulled out of the throne room. The hallway approaching. 

This.

This was it.

His breathing shuddered at the mere prospect of living through this again, and he finally tore his eyes away from the tree.

Everything was still frozen in time. Margo, her young husband-to-be, and Eliot.

 _Eliot._ Dressed like _Eliot_ , holding himself like _Eliot_ , _Quentin’s Eliot but not when we have a choice_ , and the pang in Quentin’s chest felt so heavy that he was surprised it didn’t break the spell.

This was it. Slowly, he pulled his hands apart, releasing the spell, and the clock tree dissipated as Quentin’s arm fell to his bag, his feet hesitating as time began to tick forward again.

“Well,” said Margo. “You guys got to loop out of your shitty past. Looks like I’m stuck with mine.”

Eliot shook his head, moving automatically to comfort her, a hand on her arm before he moved behind her, a towering comfort. “We are not leaving you alone with this.”

Quentin spied the peaches in the crate next to the bed, and he began to walk. If he triggered Eliot’s memories, they could acknowledge what happened, and it would be over. Margo talking in the background faded to a hum as Quentin read the letter, and he soon heard Eliot’s steps approaching, the heat from his body as he slid close. He plucked a peach up after a moment of inspection, bringing it to his mouth, though he didn’t immediately bite down. Quentin’s heart raced, the words swimming on the page, trying to pretend to read instead of watching Eliot from the corner of his eye as he inhaled the familiar aroma.

Almost in sync, they sank down onto the steps, Eliot taking a bite of the peach as Quentin tried desperately not to dwell on the memories. Fifty years. _Fifty years, but not when we have a choice._

Eliot stared ahead, reaching blindly out for his arm. “Déjà vu—”

“Peaches and…” Quentin swallowed around it, and forced the words out. “Peaches and plums.”

“Peaches and plums,” Eliot agreed, repeating it under his breath as he tried to remember. Quentin ignored the squeezing feeling in his chest, suddenly unsure of how he was going to get through this without giving himself away, without breaking down when just hearing his voice sounded like the most perfect music. How had he thought he could do… _any_ of this?

“I got… so old,” Eliot said haltingly.

“You died,” Quentin said, meeting his eyes.

Eliot seemed not to notice his inner turmoil, arm bouncing as the memories rushed back, as his finger tapped on Quentin’s arm as if asking him to remember. “I died.” Then, he took a deep breath, straightening up for a moment before the tension left his shoulders. “You had a _wife_. And we had a family.”

Quentin nodded, smiling a weak smile. “Our son.”

“Teddy…” Eliot’s eyes moved fast, no longer looking at Quentin, as if trying to calculate if he could still be alive. Quentin remembered visiting his grave, but that wouldn’t happen here for a while yet. “Did it happen?”

“Fifty years,” Quentin murmured, hoping to confirm what Eliot was still parsing through.

After a moment, Eliot concluded seriously, “It happened.”

Quentin nodded, swallowing around the words that wanted to follow, his memory of this moment so stark that reliving it felt as natural as breathing. “It did,” he agreed, trying to muster the willpower to get to his feet, to walk away. Maybe Eliot would let him go to process the fifty years, the marriage, the loss, the love alone.

“It was sort of beautiful.”

Quentin’s heart skipped a beat at the wonder in Eliot’s voice, filling in the line that had once been his.

“Wasn’t it?”

“It was,” he agreed, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. The room, the castle, Fillory — it was all too small, closing in on him as if demanding that he make the same mistake, that he play the part he’d been given regardless of the consequences. He managed to stand, legs shaky, his bag left forgotten on the floor.

“Q?” Eliot asked, starting to stand up, and Quentin pulled away while turning to face him, aware that he was trembling from head to toe. Let Eliot read it as fear, as some gay panic that he was supposed to have but never did. But what Eliot said was, “Q, we told him every day since he was little what would happen when we solved the mosaic. Granted, I doubt he thought we’d ever actually _do_ it, but—”

“Stop, _stop,_ this isn’t about—” Not Arielle, not Teddy, not the life they had, not even the life Eliot hadn’t wanted to have with him now. Didn’t want to have.

“It’s a lot, I know. We’ve just been injected with half a century of memories and all of those emotions. We…” He trailed off, blinking at Quentin before holding out his arms, performing a motion with the hand not holding the peach.

“Magic’s _gone_ , remember?” Quentin said.

Eliot didn’t answer, turning to look at the step behind him before facing Quentin again. “Did you have it that time?”

“What?”

“Déjà vu. Again. Just now. Except—” He winced, bringing his free hand up to his head. “Ow, ow, not a fan of _that_.”

“El?” He took a tentative step closer, reaching out a hand to steady his elbow, but before he could touch, he saw Eliot’s fingers _gnarl_ into the peach, juice dripping from the crushed fruit onto the floor as he stopped reeling.

Slowly, he lowered his arm and lifted his eyes to Quentin’s, and Quentin’s heart jumped into his throat.

“Why did you do this?” His voice was low and dangerously even. Quentin had seen Eliot angry before — after fifty years, of course he had. He had seen him fed up, depressed, agonized, all of his meticulously-crafted layers peeled away to a raw, bleeding place tainted with the venom he carried for himself which he spat outward in defense. This was a new type of anger, cold, and as Eliot drew himself to his full height, dropping the peach, Quentin found that he was _afraid_ of him.

“I— I didn’t do anything.” It was a weak defense, but he had no idea how Eliot could possibly know that he was here to change this. Unless… 

Eliot pretended to laugh, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. “The funny thing, about where I was when you did whatever it is that you did, to try and erase this — you couldn’t rewind me. Not all of me. The body, sure, we went tripping back through time, and he was very, _very_ upset about having his sister ripped out of his hands yet again and scattered to the winds. But I was _aware_ of it. Blackspire was like hitting a speedbump at 70 miles per hour. Poor bastard wasn’t wearing his seatbelt.”

“So you, you remember.”

“Everything.”

“Great,” Quentin said, heat simmering in his voice. “Then I can just tell you: don’t use the god-killing bullet. Just, just leave me at Blackspire, and—”

“Is that why we’re here?” Eliot lifted his head, so easily imperious even without a crown on his head. “What, you thought… not telling me would keep me from saving you?”

“You _didn’t_ save me, Eliot!”

Behind them, there was a murmur, and the two suddenly remembered the sleeping child.

Bringing his voice down, Quentin continued, “I was willing. I was ready. To— to do what no one else wanted to do, what needed to be done, and you, _without asking_ , decided that my decision didn’t matter, that I wasn’t allowed to make my own choice.”

“You were willing to make a pointless and needless sacrifice,” Eliot said flatly. “How _very_ heroic.”

“You agreed to stay in Fillory. Forever. Married to someone you didn’t even know. How— How is that _any different_ —”

“I was a king. I had Margo. You would have been alone with that thing until the next idiot with a quest showed up in— in _centuries_ , Quentin. We lived fifty years together. And we were happy. Most of the time. Can you imagine three times that, playing hide and seek and Don’t Wake Daddy with a fucking monster?”

“Yeah, I can, actually, because I’ve had to do it every single day since he took you away.”

Another sleepy murmur, and the two men glared at one another. Eliot reached out to grab Quentin’s wrist, pulling him into the hallway. Quentin, despite his anger, followed, eager to get somewhere where they could talk about this without fucking up the timeline more than they already had by both traveling back in time. Eliot swerved suddenly, taking some stairs in a tight spiral down, and in a daylit hallway, he found an empty room, shoving Quentin inside and following behind. Eliot was careful not to slam the door, but the click of the lock was audible, leaving them trapped with each other.

“Q, you were going to do something stupid and irresponsible and while I normally approve of that, you were going to make yourself miserable with no escape. All to, to feed this ideal you’ve built in your head of being the next great hero of Fillory.”

“Yeah, and?” Quentin threw his hands up before raking them back through his hair again, pushing it behind his ears. “You wouldn’t be possessed! The monster wouldn’t have killed Iris, Bacchus, and Aengus. Everything would be better.”

“Except for the part where you’re _stuck in Blackspire forever_.”

“Why do you care?!”

The shout seemed to echo in the stone walls, hanging heavily over the two of them. The air was thick, and if magic had been present, Quentin was sure it would take only the tiniest spark to ignite. Quentin swallowed thickly, crossing his arms in front of his chest. 

Eliot stared at him, familiar notes of both concern and confusion in his expression. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re my best friend. We spent _fifty years_ together.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, aware suddenly of how his body was shaking. “Because we didn’t have a choice.”

Eliot cleared his throat. “When I said—” He took a deep breath, obviously trying to find some point to center himself. “I was scared, so I ran, and I hurt you on purpose because I didn’t want you to chase me.” With a self deprecating laugh and a bittersweet smile, he added, “Which is what I assume you were trying to do, too. Coming back here.” He shook his head. “I know you had a choice. In that lifetime and in this one. You chose to put yourself out there, and I— I’m so fucking sorry, Quentin.”

Quentin was suddenly, acutely aware that he didn’t want Eliot’s apologies. He didn’t want excuses, or even a return of the feelings that he had been so sure they shared until the moment Eliot broke his heart. What he wanted was _Eliot._ After months without him, after months of staring at his body, his face, and not recognizing the person behind them. He opened his mouth to ask, but his next breath was shaky, catching like a sob, and in several long strides, Eliot crossed the room and pulled Quentin into his arms.

Quentin buried his head against Eliot’s chest, hands coming up to clutch at his back, clinging as Eliot held him close and tight.

“I missed you so fucking much, El,” he managed to say, voice barely a whisper.

“I know.” Lips pressed softly against his hairline. “Because if you missed me even half as much as I missed you…”

“I had to see you. Every single day, and I had to act like nothing was wrong.” His fingers gnarled in Eliot’s vest, suddenly aware of the sticky peach juice that had dried on Eliot’s hand catching on his hoodie as Eliot attempted to rub his back. “I had to be his _friend_. And I— he wasn’t going to give you back. He was going to kill you and take a new host whenever he got bored, so what the fuck was I supposed to do?”

“So you _do_ understand why I used the bullet.”

“No, because you don’t—” His throat choked around the words unsaid, and Eliot rested his head on Quentin’s.

“I would have done it, even if we hadn’t spent fifty years together and had a son. I would have done it even if you hadn’t said what you did the first time. I would have done it any single day from the first time the Beast attacked until where we were, and I’d do it again and again without caring about the consequences. I _care_ about you, Q. The way I’ve only cared for, like, Margo and myself before.”

Quentin bit out a laugh, feeling tears prick at his eyes. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t, not really. All of this felt too much like a dream which he’d soon wake up from, back to that cold, gray, dead world where all he could do was fight tooth and nail until both broke and bled in the vain hope that Eliot might survive.

“So you don’t get to change this. Not a second of it, because where we are, back in our current time? That was all me. Nothing you say or do is going to make me _stop_ caring about you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Mm, luckily for me, that’s my decision.”

Quentin did manage to laugh again, shoulders shaking with another sob, every repressed feeling of grief seeping out of him now that he had Eliot in his arms, now that he no longer needed to pretend he was stronger than he was.

After a few moments, his crying started to peter off, though his breathing was still uneven, catching in his chest.

“You may not get to be the hero Fillory needs,” Eliot said, keeping his voice light though he still had a tight hold on Quentin. “But when we go back, when the clock tree spell wears off — I know you can be mine. If you haven’t given up on me yet.”

“I haven’t. I won’t.”

“Good. So I want you to imagine me in the cottage, blasting _‘Holding Out For A Hero’_ for you — and to distract the terrible shadow monsters inside my head — while I look for another weak spot to get out. Every time you see him and wish it was me, know I’m performing guerrilla warfare with my psyche trying to get back to you. So we can have this conversation again. And so I can say everything right that I fucked up the first time. Hopefully.” Quentin pulled away slightly to look up at him. Eliot gave him a weak smile. “No promises. I’m still… learning to be brave.”

“I’m gonna make you work for it,” Quentin promised, fingers tightening as if he could hold them both in this moment forever.

“I deserve that.” Eliot leaned down, touching his forehead to Quentin’s. Softly, he said, “I’ll see you soon.”

“You don’t know that,” Quentin said, feeling the despair wrap tighter around his heart. The world around them was wavering; it wouldn’t be long before they were racing back to the present time.

“I do.” Eliot smiled, the shape of it so achingly familiar that Quentin pushed himself to his toes, lips against Eliot’s in a brief kiss before Eliot murmured in the thin air between them. “I know who my hero is, Q. I have excellent proof of concept.”

Quentin choked again on another desperate noise; a laugh or a sob, and with another fleeting brush of their lips, he soon found himself alone, slumped against a tree in a dull, gray Fillory that was now missing a clock. He turned his eyes up towards the towers of Whitespire, taking a shaking breath as he pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed his bag, looping it around his shoulder, and set off. Once he got there, he’d send a rabbit to Penny, and get back to Earth.

It was time to end this and get Eliot back.


End file.
